The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat.

Eric Roston (Walker, 2009). Wanted to know more about the carbon cycle. Found this book. Worth reading.

Forest Trees of Illinois. Robert H. Mohlenbrock (Illinois Department of Natural Resources). Very good and complete, with natural habitats shown by county.

Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community. H. C. Flores (Chelsea Green, 2006). A gardening book for radical gardeners. Some people are put off by its "preachiness," but not me. Like Gaia's Garden, Oregon-centric, so not all advice is not practical for our region.

Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture. Toby Hemenway (Chelsea Green, 2009). A classic. Good advice on methods, though West Coast-centric so not all recommendations are suitable for the Midwest.

Land of Big Rivers: French and Indian Illinois, 1699-1778. M. J. Morgan (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010). Environmental history of the land and peoples along the Mississippi between the Missouri and the Ohio Rivers.

Short and long selections, first-person accounts of the Chicago wilderness and how it changed over the years.

The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening. Wilhelm Miller (University of Illinois, 1915; Reprint edition, University of Massachusetts, August, 2002). Old yet timely advice by the man who invented the term "prairie style" as he advocated for using native plants and naturalistic designs.

A Sand County Almanac (Outdoor Essays and Reflections). Aldo Leopold (Ballantine, 1986). There are several available editions of this seminal work by one of the foremost American conservationists. These essays distil his thought in poetic fashion. A life-changing book.

Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Donella Meadows(Chelsea Green, 2008). Ever wonder about why an ecosystem is called that? What a feedback loop is? This book explains how system theory works, in clear language with good diagrams.

Underground: How Creatures of Mud and Dirt Shape Our World. Yvonne Baskin. (Island Press, 2006). Well written discussion using current scientific research to explain soil ecosystems for the interested layperson.

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Gardening

And, as it works, th' industrious bee Computes its time as well as we.How could such sweet and wholesome hoursBe reckoned but with herbs and flowers!Andrew Marvell, "The Garden"

Reconciliation Ecology

...We can stop most [species reductions] by redesigning anthropogenic habitats so that their use is compatible with use by a broad array of other species. That is reconciliation ecology. Many pilot projects...are demonstrating that it can be done.

Michael L. Rosenzweig, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, 2003

Did you know nearly half of the oil used in the U.S. is for personal transportation? If everyone used 10% fewer gallons of gas, we in the U.S. could actually reduce our demand for oil and end our codependent relationship with Big Oil. We'd also reduce CO2 emissions and help prevent future ecological catastrophes.

So think twice before you drive, and start taking ten off the top today! Pass it on!